Advances in computing hardware and software have facilitated the ability to store and retrieve enormous amounts of information. Networks have made this information accessible from virtually any location. Thus, users have the ability to search and review data in many different formats such as in a grid. However, in many cases the data returned is in tabular form, such that the user will have to mentally analyze key pieces of information about the data, such as trends, high and low values, and so on.
Data analysis users have long ago determined that providing a graphical representation of the data can greatly assist in understanding more about the data. For example, pie charts, bar charts, and the like provide an informative visualization as to characteristics about the data. Such representations can be found in spreadsheet applications that allow the user to select sets of data and to then represent the data as a chart, for example.
Customer management systems are valuable repositories of customer data. However, although reporting solutions such as provided in SQL server services allow a customer relations management user to derive some insights, there are several shortcomings. For example, some of the shortcomings include a lack of tight integration with the grid, lack of interactivity, and also the requirement of another software module to be installed on the system. Moreover, without the aid of useful visualizations it is difficult for a user to obtain insights that otherwise might be found from this data.